Click on the Blue Titles to read a passage from these chapters:
Puppy Love and Pure Smut—Two semesters of teen locker-room jokes had introduced me to the banter of bathroom humor, flatulent noises and sexual innuendo that are part of every American boy’s adolescence. Somehow my mother had no idea that I could tell a smutty joke…until she heard my banter with two Tennessee cousins.
The Mermaid—Bob Norton was the quiet one in the art class, and I often thought he must be even shier than me. If the others at the table fell into broad laughter, Bob often would just smile and look down, as though he were embarrassed to make eye contact. We were very surprised when Bob came into class saying he had seen a live mermaid.
Stilts and Checkers—What made Thanksgiving special for me that year had nothing to do with the turkey dinner, the conversation around the table, or the family members who gathered there. The sweet memory lingers of my father setting aside his sales calls to indulge in kids’ games with me. I remember him striding up the hillside on the tall stilts, then later sitting across the checkerboard from me, smiling broadly as he saw my realization that he knew something about the game that I didn’t.
The Storm Drain—In the year and a half I had known him, Charlie had become my best friend and confidant. We had few secrets from one another, and the walk to and from school provided us a lot of time to talk. With four siblings at home, he went without a lot of everyday things that I took for granted. Charlie had been trained in the ability to stretch a dollar…or a shirttail.
Bedtime Story—My first hula-hoop provided a distraction that blinded me to the masculine storm front fast approaching my event horizon. At age 5, I lacked the perspective to see that my mother was looking for a new husband, and as the heat of the high-desert summer engulfed us, I was oblivious to the fact that Hal Lyman was about to become my stepfather.
Off the Tracks—As we pulled out of New Orleans on a bright morning in early November, I remember standing at the train window, gazing at the passing scenery. At age 2, I was walking now, and my mother didn’t think I’d be needing that old stroller, or the highchair, both of which she had sold along with her dining table, chairs, a large mirror, and the living room rug. In this way, she raised the money for our train tickets to Knoxville. She was leaving my father without a word.
Fire in the Sky—We moved to Simi Valley in 1964, and our new home was less than 5 miles from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Viewed from the valley floor, the Rocketdyne facility blended into the background, and gave little clue that the daily operations there played a key role in President Kennedy’s goal of placing an American astronaut on the Moon before the end of the decade. When the rocket test stands roared to life, manmade thunder rumbled across the valley floor.
The Lightning Rod—The Lightning Rod—Things were never quite the same after my mother came back from Tennessee that summer. Suddenly there were secrets in the house. Safeguarding any hint of my sexual awakening was chief among them, but I began to realize that my mother was tending some secrets of her own. The whole situation with my stepfather was an open secret. My mother clung tenaciously to the image that ours was a happy family, and she had a knack for dismissing even strong evidence to the contrary…such as a husband who only came home on weekends. Nobody was calling it what it really was, a trial separation.